Day 531
Today was definitely the worst day since Walter and I began our relationship.
I was already feeling sorry for myself. I had been officially side-lined from fieldwork until after the baby was born by my midwife.
I spent the entire day in the Garage feeling sorry for myself, eating half my body weight in ice cream and pretzels while Walter and the rest of the team were racing to find and disarm a bomb planted by a domestic terrorist in Long Beach.
The team succeeded in foiling the plot, but not without casualties. One of the bomb maker's early prototypes accidentally went off after the suspect had been apprehended, killing the unfortunate occupants of the apartment next door to his. The whole team took that news really hard. Unsurprisingly, Walter blamed himself for failing the woman and her young son.
I was already feeling so emotional and hormonal and the moment I saw Walter walk into the Garage, I just burst into tears. He didn't say a word, he didn't touch me, he wouldn't let me touch him. He just silently walked back out of the Garage toward our car, climbed into the driver's seat, patiently waiting for me to follow, and drove us home.
I knew that Walter needed to process his emotions from the events of the day in his own way. But I thought we had gotten past this complete emotional shutdown and keeping me at arm's length nonsense. I was wrong and it hurt a lot.
Ralph, who didn't even know the outcome of the case, could feel the tension in the air and disappeared into his room the moment that 'Cold Front Walter' entered the house. Part of me longed to do the same thing, but another part of me needed to be near him and needed to be comforted by him. Unfortunately, I was less than emotionally stable. Every word out of my mouth made it all about me and my fears and unhappiness. About my need for him to talk to me. And I was met with nothing but stony silence as Walter sat at his computer, making notes in his case report for Cabe.
He didn't speak until finally in a fit of frustration, Walter raised his voice, told me to leave him the hell alone, and stormed off, slamming the back door behind him and retreating into his man cave, the lab at the back of the property that he and Ralph had so lovingly created.
I retreated to my room with my new best friends, Ben and Jerry. But even the ice cream didn't help. I just cried until I didn't have any tears left, but that didn't stop the great heaving sobs. At some point, I must have fallen into a restless sleep.
When I awoke, dehydrated, disoriented, and heartbroken, I couldn't stand the thought of facing Walter. I saw my stupid 'translating the love language of a quirky genius' journal peeking out of my nightstand drawer. I longed to throw it across the room, shred it, burn it, dip it in liquid nitrogen, and then smash it with a sledgehammer. My methods of destroying the evidence of Walter's love grew more and more exaggerated as my feelings of fear and abandonment grew more exaggerated as well.
Had he ever really loved me at all? We'd had kind of an extended honeymoon phase in our relationship since our time with Dr. Rizutto, bumps along the way, but nothing major, nothing like this!
Was this the beginning of the end? Had Walter's grand experiment of becoming more human been a colossal failure with me, Ralph, and Baby Megan as collateral damage? Did I need to leave him, and blow up our relationship, before he could break my heart first?
All my old fears and ghosts of failed relationships reared their ugly heads and told me to get out while the getting was good. Walter had fallen back into old patterns and so had I. I grabbed a bag off the shelf in the closet and started shoving the first articles of clothing I found into it. As soon as I was packed, I would gather Ralph and head to a hotel. This was my plan until a note that Walter had left on my windshield a few weeks before fell out of the journal as I attempted to shove the annoying thing back into its drawer on the nightstand.
My Love,
Your superlative understanding of humanity in all its messy, confusing, and illogical glory illuminates my detached and intellectual existence. Please never forget how grateful I am for your unwavering love and patience as I attempt to learn how to embrace my own humanity.
Forever yours,
Walter O'Brien
From out of nowhere, fresh tears bubbled up and started falling down my cheeks, I tossed the bag I had been packing aside and climbed back into bed with that wonderful, marvelous journal and started rereading every day's entries from the past few months.
Eventually, the tears dried up and my heart swelled with love and amazement at the weird and wonderful ways that Walter O'Brien had shown me the depth of his love as I reread and re-lived each entry.
Once finished, I wandered back to the main part of the house, Walter was still nowhere to be found. I opened the door to the former den, now my own personal space, and pulled the key from its hiding place inside a romance novel on the bookshelf. I unlocked the cupboard Walter had made for my journals with his own non-carpentry expert hands but still managed to make the single most beautiful piece of woodworking I had ever seen. I pulled out the rest of the journals one by one, rereading every single moment of love and devotion that Walter had shown me since we visited Dr. Rizutto that fateful day.
The last entry I read, was the first one ever written. Day 0. Two paragraphs from that entry jumped out at me.
On those days, I am to take the time that I would have spent writing and reread past journal entries, reminding myself that even though Walter may be having an off day, he is still a good man. A man who risked exposing his own vulnerability, not expecting me to reciprocate, to express his feelings to me at Toby and Happy's wedding.
I also need to remember that love from Walter may not always look like what I am expecting from a romantic partner. Walter's brain works differently from a human's, so sometimes his love will look a bit strange and not romantic or normal. It will just be so totally Walter.
I was shocked at how prescient those words were. I had been so foolish. I had let my old fears bubble up in a way that could have cost me Walter, my marriage, and maybe even Ralph and Baby Megan. It could have cost me everything. Thank God for these journals and for Dr. Rizutto's advice, saving me from ruining my own life.
I made a mental note to call him tomorrow and thank him for his wisdom.
I put the last journal away, locked the cupboard, and hid the key, then I went looking for my amazing, brave, funny, smart, loving husband. He wasn't hard to find this time. He had migrated into his office and was furiously scribbling equations on the whiteboard. He stiffened when he noticed me enter the room, no doubt thinking I was spoiling for a fight or just ready to say something hurtful and run.
And who could blame him? That had been my pattern after all.
I did neither of those things, instead, I just came up behind him, wrapped my arms around him, pressed my forehead into his shoulder blade, and whispered, "I love you." Nothing more. Then I went into the kitchen and started making Walter's favorite cheesy lemon garlic pasta. One thing I knew about Walter, he would never stop to eat when he was on a case and when a case went sideways like today's case did, he wouldn't take the time to eat afterward either. He would be too busy blaming himself for not being superhuman and perfect and able to save everyone every time.
Soon enough, I was no longer in the kitchen alone, within a few minutes both Walter and Ralph had joined me, Walter juicing the lemons for the pasta, and Ralph chopping lettuce for a green salad. Soon we were laughing, talking, just enjoying this small moment together, including Walter pressing his hand to my swelling abdomen to feel Megan kicking, showing that she was part of the family too.
Walter didn't do anything today, no grand gestures, no stolen kisses, no love notes. He didn't need to because he had already shown me for 530 days before this and countless days even before I was paying attention that he loves me and he's not going anywhere. Tonight, I realized, neither am I.
Author's Note:
I've had this idea for this journal entry ever since I conceived of the idea of Paige's journal as an ongoing story. As much as I love cotton candy sweet romantic stories between Walter and Paige, we all (including me) need a reality check every once in a while. This is likely to be the only entry in which Paige gets a large dose of reality, reacts poorly to it, and grabs onto the journals as a lifeline instead of blowing up the relationship, but in reality, she is likely to have many of those moments, I just don't plan to write them and I doubt you would want to read them. I enjoy allowing the characters to mature, learn from their mistakes, and grow (especially since the show didn't give us a lot of that, especially in the Walter/Paige relationship dynamic). So hopefully as the years roll on, those kinds of moments for Paige will be fewer and further between. I also really wanted to show this moment because even though I am enjoying writing these little stories, I kind of hate that Walter is auditioning to be worthy of Paige's love on a daily basis. I get it that that's what she needs to feel secure, but I still am a little sad for her that she doesn't have the maturity not to need the journal as a constant reminder to focus her attention on Walter and his sterling qualities as a man, father, and romantic partner. There is also a part of me that wants to see Paige keep a daily journal tracking the ways she shows her love to Walter, maybe she would judge him less harshly then. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Goodnight.